Our Principles

Make Use of What We Do

Crowdsource Q&A

AskThem supports continual questions to public figures & during events. Issue-based groups, use AskThem to contact elected officials at every level of government. Media companies, partner with us to promote popular questions in your area. Elected officials, sign up as leaders in #opengov.

Remix Our Open Code

We're open-source to the core, contributors to the commons, evangelists for open standards, co-framers of OpenGovData Principles, and activists for liberation of public data. See our wish list, check out our code, and more.

Support Our Public-Mission Work

We're a tiny team with big goals for participatory democracy. Our limiting factor isn't ideas, or a lack of information to make accessible, but rather funding for open-source development. Your support can build amazing new open-source tools. Get in touch.

Our sibling non-profit is the Participatory Culture Foundation,
working for a fairer, more open, and more democratic media space.

PPF Blog

The open-source, open-data, non-profit AskThem Q&A platform is undergoing a volunteer redesign (!) for public accountability around the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. The website is going offline for the summer, ahead of re-launch, date to be announced.

Same with PPF’s deprecated website OpenGovernment.org, whose open-source GovKit tech is being retired.

We’re excited to show what we’re building for continual public conversation with candidates in every state and Congressional district and more.

Sample question page created by widget, for a member of GOP Oversight Cmte.

Questions or comments, email David Moore, AskThem’s Director: david at ppolitics.org, or I’m easily reachable on Twitter, @ppolitics.

Rails programmers, web designers, are you available to help with the volunteer redesign? We’re just a couple of folks.

Get in touch, simply email: david at ppolitics.org, or DM us on Twttr: @AskThemPPF, or jump in to our new GitHub repo. Exciting stuff, there.

More to come on dev priorities and front-end opportunities. Background on AskThem’s unique strategy for re-engagement (Jan. 2017).

Questions welcome, thank you for using OpenGovernment and AskThem over the years.